Executing courts must decide cases in six months: HC

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it clear that the executing courts are duty-bound to decide execution petitions within six months of their filing as mandated by the Supreme Court.

The court also made it clear that delaying tactics by judgment debtors—those required to comply with a decree—must not be allowed to frustrate the process as the executing court was responsible for ensuring compliance with apex court’s directions in letter and spirit.

“The executing courts are obligated and under a duty to dispose of execution petitions within a period of six months from the date of filing. It is also not unknown that judgment debtors try to delay the proceedings by filing one application or the other. It would, however, be for the executing court to deal with such tactics and comply with the directions issued by the Supreme Court of India in letter and spirit,” Justice Vikram Aggarwal asserted, while citing the Supreme Court’s judgment in the case of “Rahul S Shah versus Jinendra Kumar Gandhi and others”. The development is significant as obtaining a decree from the courts below seldom comes with a sense of triumph for the winning side, as the real battle begins in getting it executed. The entire process, embroiled in technicalities, takes years and years. The ruling by Justice Aggarwal came in response to a petition filed by a person for issuance of a direction to the executing court to decide his execution petition in a time-bound manner. The Bench was told that he was seeking the execution of a final partition decree passed in his favour in 2013. Despite the decree, the execution petition filed in 2017 remained pending.